History

'C' comes from the same letter as 'G'. The Semites named it gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name gimel. Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was gamal. Barry B. Powell, a specialist in the history of writing, states "It is hard to imagine how gimel = "camel" can be derived from the picture of a camel (it may show his hump, or his head and neck!)".[2]

In the Etruscan language, plosive consonants had no contrastive voicing, so the Greek 'Γ' (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent /k/. Already in the Western Greek alphabet, Gamma first took a '' form in Early Etruscan, then '' in Classical Etruscan. In Latin it eventually took the 'c' form in Classical Latin. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters 'c k q' were used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, 'q' was used to represent /k/ or /ɡ/ before a rounded vowel, 'k' before 'a', and 'c' elsewhere.[3] During the 3rd century BC, a modified character was introduced for /ɡ/, and 'c' itself was retained for /k/. The use of 'c' (and its variant 'g') replaced most usages of 'k' and 'q'. Hence, in the classical period and after, 'g' was treated as the equivalent of Greek gamma, and 'c' as the equivalent of kappa; this shows in the romanization of Greek words, as in 'KAΔMOΣ', 'KYPOΣ', and 'ΦΩKIΣ' came into Latin as 'cadmvs', 'cyrvs' and 'phocis', respectively.

Other alphabets have letters homoglyphic to 'c' but not in use and derivation, like the Cyrillic letter Es (С, с) which derives from the lunate sigma, named due to its resemblance to the crescent moon.

Later use

When the Roman alphabet was introduced into Britain, 'c' represented only /k/ and this value of the letter has been retained in loanwords to all the insular Celtic languages: in Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, 'c' represents only /k/. The Old English or "Anglo-Saxon" writing was learned from the Celts, apparently of Ireland; hence 'c' in Old English also originally represented /k/; the Modern English words kin, break, broken, thick, and seek, all come from Old English words written with 'c': cyn, brecan, brocen, þicc, and séoc. But during the course of the Old English period, /k/ before front vowels (/e/ and /i/) were palatalized, having changed by the tenth century to [tʃ], though 'c' was still used, as in cir(i)ce, wrecc(e)a. On the continent, meanwhile, a similar phonetic change had also been going on (for example, in Italian).

In Vulgar Latin, /k/ became palatalized to [tʃ] in Italy and Dalmatia; in France and the Iberian peninsula, it became [ts]. Yet for these new sounds ⟨c⟩ was still used before front vowels ⟨e⟩,⟨ i⟩. The letter thus represented two distinct values. Subsequently, the Latin phoneme /kʷ/ (spelled ⟨qv⟩) de-labialized to /k/ meaning that the various Romance languages had /k/ before front vowels. In addition, Norman used the Greek letter 'k' so that the sound /k/ could be represented by either 'k' or 'c' the latter of which could represent either /k/ or /ts/ depending on whether it preceded a front vowel or not. The convention of using both c' and 'k' was applied to the writing of English after the Norman Conquest, causing a considerable re-spelling of the Old English words. Thus while Old English candel, clif, corn, crop, cú, remained unchanged, Cent, cæ´ᵹ (cé´ᵹ), cyng, brece, séoce, were now (without any change of sound) spelled 'Kent', 'keȝ', 'kyng', 'breke', and 'seoke'; even cniht ('knight') was subsequently changed to 'kniht' and þic ('thick') changed to 'thik' or 'thikk'. The Old English 'cw' was also at length displaced by the French 'qu' so that the Old English cwén ('queen') and cwic ('quick') became Middle English 'quen' 'quik', respectively. [tʃ] to which Old English palatalized /k/ had advanced, also occurred in French, chiefly from Latin /k/ before 'a'. In French it was represented by 'ch', as in champ (from Latin camp-um) and this spelling was introduced into English: the Hatton Gospels, written about 1160, have in Matt. i-iii, child, chyld, riche, mychel, for the cild, rice, mycel, of the Old English version whence they were copied. In these cases, the Old English 'c' gave place to 'k qu ch' but, on the other hand, 'c' in its new value of /ts/ came in largely in French words like processiun, emperice, grace, and was also substituted for 'ts' in a few Old English words, as miltse, bletsien, in early Middle English milce, blecien. By the end of the thirteenth century both in France and England, this sound /ts/ de-affricated to /s/; and from that time 'c' has represented /s/ before front vowels either for etymological reasons, as in lance, cent, or (in defiance of etymology)[citation needed] to avoid the ambiguity due to the "etymological" use of 's' for /z/, as in ace, mice, once, pence, defence.

Thus, to show the etymology, English spelling has advise, devise, instead of advize, devize, which while advice, device, dice, ice, mice, twice, etc., do not reflect etymology; example has extended this to hence, pence, defence, etc., where there is no etymological necessity for 'c'. Former generations also wrote sence for sense. Hence, today the Romance languages and English have a common feature inherited from Vulgar Latin where 'c' takes on either a "hard" or "soft" value depending on the following vowel.

Use in orthographies

English

In English orthography, 'c' generally represents a "soft" value of /s/ before the vowel letters 'e' (including the Latin-derived digraphs ae and oe), 'i' and 'y' and a "hard" value of /k/ before the vowel letters 'a', 'o' and 'u'. However, there are a number of exceptions in English: "soccer" and "Celt" are words that have /k/ where /s/ would be expected.

The soft c may represent the /ʃ/ sound in the digraph 'ci' when this precedes a vowel, as in the words 'delicious' and 'appreciate'.

The digraph 'ch' most commonly represents /tʃ/, but can take the value /k/ (mainly in words of Greek origin) or /ʃ/ (mainly in words of French origin); some dialects of English also have /x/ in words like loch where other speakers pronounce the final sound as /k/. The trigraph 'tch' always represents /tʃ/.

The digraph 'ck' is often used to represent the sound /k/ after short vowels.

Other languages

In the Romance languages French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, 'c' generally has a "hard" value of /k/ and a "soft" value, the pronunciation of which varies by language. In French, Portuguese, and Spanish from Latin America and southern Spain, the soft 'c' value is /s/ as it is in English. In the Spanish spoken in northern and central Spain, the soft 'c' is a voiceless dental fricative/θ/. In Italian and Romanian, the soft 'c' is [t͡ʃ].

Other digraphs and trigraphs

As in English, 'Ck', with the value /k/, is often used after short vowels in other Germanic languages such as German and Swedish (but some other Germanic languages use 'kk' instead, such as Dutch and Norwegian). The digraph 'cz' is found in Polish and 'cs' in Hungarian, both representing /t͡ʃ/. The digraph 'sc' represents /ʃ/ in Old English, Italian, and a few languages related to Italian, (however in Italian and related languages this only happens before front vowels, otherwise it represents /sk/). The trigraph 'sch' represents /ʃ/ in German.